InfoScale™ 9.0 SmartIO for Solid-State Drives Solutions Guide - Solaris

Last Published:
Product(s): InfoScale & Storage Foundation (9.0)
Platform: Solaris
  1. Introducing SFHA Solutions SmartIO
    1.  
      About SmartIO for solid-state drives
    2.  
      About SmartIO in an SFHA environment
    3.  
      About SmartIO in an Active/Active cluster environment
    4. About SmartIO in the Solaris virtualized environments
      1.  
        Performing live migration between LDOMs in the SmartIO environment
    5.  
      About the SmartIO caching profiler tool
  2. Using the SmartIO feature: use cases
    1. About SmartIO read caching for applications running on VxVM volumes
      1.  
        Required configuration for SmartIO read caching for VxVM volumes
      2.  
        Automatic caching for VxVM volumes
      3.  
        Setting up SmartIO read caching for VxVM volumes
      4.  
        Verifying the VxVM cache area and monitoring the caching
    2. About SmartIO read caching for applications running on VxFS file systems
      1.  
        Required configuration for SmartIO read caching for a VxFS file system
      2.  
        Automatic caching for VxFS file systems
      3.  
        Setting up SmartIO read caching for VxFS file systems
      4.  
        Verifying the VxFS cache area and monitoring the caching
      5.  
        Customizing the caching behavior
    3. About SmartIO caching on SSD devices exported by FSS
      1.  
        Status of cache areas when nodes leave or join the cluster
      2.  
        Setting up cache areas using SSDs exported by FSS
    4. About SmartIO write-back caching for applications running on VxFS file systems
      1.  
        Required configuration for SmartIO write-back caching for a VxFS file system
      2.  
        Setting up SmartIO write-back caching for VxFS file systems
      3.  
        Verifying the VxFS cache area and monitoring the caching (writeback mode)
    5. About multiple SmartIO cache areas for read and write-back caching on VxFS file systems
      1.  
        About the smartiocache option
      2.  
        Converting VxFS cache areas from one type to another
      3.  
        Setting up multiple cache areas on a system
      4.  
        Verifying the VxFS cache areas
    6. About SmartIO caching for Oracle databases on VxFS file systems
      1.  
        Prerequisites and configuration for using the SmartIO plug-in for Oracle
      2.  
        Setting default SmartIO caching policies for a database running on a VxFS file system
      3.  
        Setting SmartIO caching policies for database objects
      4.  
        Pinning and unpinning database objects
      5.  
        Enabling and disabling caching for the database
      6.  
        Listing cache policy details for the database
      7.  
        Listing cache statistics for the database
    7. About SmartIO caching for databases on VxVM volumes
      1.  
        Applying a SmartIO database caching template for a VxVM volume
  3. Administering SmartIO
    1.  
      Creating a cache area
    2.  
      Displaying information about a cache area
    3. Enabling or disabling caching for a data object
      1.  
        Enabling or disabling caching for a file system
      2.  
        Enabling or disabling caching for a data volume
    4.  
      Adding a device to the cache area
    5.  
      Pausing caching from a volume to a cache area
    6.  
      Removing a device from the cache area
    7.  
      Destroying a cache area
    8.  
      Setting the attributes of the VxVM cache area
    9.  
      Setting or changing the caching mode for a VxFS cache area
    10.  
      Flushing dirty data from a writeback cache area
    11.  
      Tuning the writeback caching
    12. Viewing the SmartIO cache statistics
      1.  
        Viewing the detailed caching stats for a VxVM cache area
      2.  
        Viewing the detailed caching stats for a VxFS cache area
  4. Troubleshooting and error handling
    1. Support for a persistent or 'warm' VxVM cache
      1.  
        Primary volume failure with a stale cache could cause possible data corruption
      2.  
        Migrating a cache during HA failover is not supported
    2.  
      Cache area is lost after a disk failure (3158482)
    3.  
      Cache is not online after a reboot
    4.  
      Recovering the write-back cache after a node failure
  5. Appendix A. Command reference
    1.  
      SmartIO command reference

Setting up SmartIO write-back caching for VxFS file systems

In writeback mode, the SmartIO feature caches the VxFS file system read and write I/Os. To set up SmartIO for write-back caching for a VxFS file system, create the cache area and mount the file system in writeback mode.

Setting up SmartIO write-back caching for VxFS file systems

  1. Create the VxFS cache area on the SSD device, using one of the following commands.

    • Specify one or more devices using the disk access name (daname) of the device. The device should be initialized for VxVM use and have the cdsdisk format. 

      # sfcache create [-t VxFS] [size] daname[...] [--auto|--noauto] \
 [--nostripe|ncols=N] [cachearea_name]

      Where:

      daname specifies the disk access name of the device on which to create the cache area.

      cachearea_name specifies a customized name for the cache area. If unspecified, the SmartIO feature automatically generates a name for the cache area.

      size specifies the size for the cache area. By default, the cache area uses all of the available space on the device.

      --noauto|--auto specifies the type of cache area. The default is --auto.

      For example:

      # sfcache create ssd0_0

      --nostripe|ncols=n specifies the layout options for the cache area. By default, the cache area is created over a striped volume if two or more disks are specified. Use the ncols=n option to specify the number of columns for the striped volume. Use the --nostripe option to create the cache area on a concatenated volume over the specified disks.

    • Alternatively, you can specify the name of a disk group and a volume to use for the cache area. In this case, you cannot specify a size: the cache area uses the entire volume.

      # sfcache create [-t VxFS] [--noauto|--auto] dg/vol

      Where:

      --noauto|--auto specifies the type of cache area. The default is --auto.

      dg/vol specifies the disk group name and volume name that you want to use for the cache area. SmartIO uses this name for the cache area.

      For example:

      # sfcache create --auto ssd_dg/ssd_vol
  2. Mount the VxFS file system and set the smartiomode option to writeback. If the file system is already mounted, you must remount the file system to set the smartiomode option to writeback.

    Example of local mount: 

    # mount -F vxfs -o smartiomode=writeback /dev/vx/dsk/testdg/vol1 \
 /mnt1

    Example of remount:

    # mount -F vxfs -o remount,smartiomode=writeback \
/dev/vx/dsk/testdg/vol1 /mnt1

    For a cluster file system, the file system must be mounted on both the nodes with the smartiomode and cluster options set.

    When you mount the CFS file system with these options, SmartIO automatically reflects the cache on the other node's SSD cache.

    Example of CFS mount:

    # mount -F vxfs -o cluster,smartiomode=writeback \
/dev/vx/dsk/testdg/vol1 /mnt1

    To enable write-back caching, the smartiomode option must be set to writeback regardless of whether the cache area is auto or noauto. If the cache area is auto and the smartiomode is not set, SmartIO caching is enabled in the default read mode for the file system.

  3. If required, you can further customize the caching behavior.

    See Customizing the caching behavior.

    See Tuning the writeback caching.